Malice in Wonderland | rated R (L,V) | starring Maggie Grace, Danny Dyer | 1:27 mins
A woman on the run (Maggie Grace) gets hit by a cab which gives her a case of amnesia, the driver of which, Whitey (Danny Dyer), is running late for a very important date so he takes her with him into the London criminal underground. While Whitey looks for a present for a top mobster, the woman seeks to get her memory back while running across all sorts of characters who want her for the 10 million dollar reward her wealthy father has promised for her return.
Malice in Wonderland is a hard to categorize trip of a movie. A resourceful, clever independent production that deconstructs and reconstructs Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland” fable as a tale of mobsters, drug dealers, pimps and prostitutes. I went in expecting another snarky, more clever than it is funny British criminal movie and, while there is some of that, what I got was a visually imaginative and surprisingly beautiful movie. Director Simon Fellows opens the film with a hauntingly perfect “Bring Her Head Back” by Angelica mixed with home videos of our heroine as a child. A foreshadowing of the discovery our amnesiac heroine is going to make after she gets her identity back that provides the movie a backbone to offset the criminal craziness of it. Part humerous “Alice” parody, part crime film and part effectively surreal circular puzzler that made me want to watch it again.
The film is well written and the “Alice in Wonderland” referencing goes along way to keeping it fun and intriguing – particularly during a dull middle section that, like “Alice” itself, boggs down in introducing us to one odd character after another who speaks in riddles. Cab driver Whitey wears two watches as the White Rabbit, the Chesher Cat is a DJ on a billboard, the Mad Hatter is a loony hair dresser and madam and the Red Queen – he’s a gay criminal mobster. The movie chooses the White Rabbit to be the unlikely hero with British comic actor Danny Dyer stepping into the role well. But it’s Maggie Grace (Lost) who really surprises proving to be a capable leading lady. She really steps up here.
In the shadow of Disney and Tim Burton’s re-imagining of Alice in Wonderland, a visually dazzling but empty and oddly confined film, Malice is a delight, proving the old addage that a lack of money promotes invention. Fellows creates a perfectly reasonable new wonderland out of slot machines, tunnels, merry-go-rounds and other flashy real devices. That inginuity and talent makes the production look bigger and more polished than it probably was. Heck, it even has a more expansive feel then Tim Burton’s Alice. For much of it’s running time I wasn’t sure what Malice was supposed to be. It’s not particularly funny or exciting, but it is weird enough. But here’s the real kicker. Just when you think all may be lost in a haze of puzzles, pot smoking, rhymes and parody that threatens to turn self-indulgent – Malice takes a turn to sweetness in a third act that saves the day. Wrapping things up in a way that shows what a heartfelt and oddly beautiful a film this really was.